


Displaced

by Roadstergal



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Depression, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Loneliness, Loss, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Meld, Mindfuck, Nightmares, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vegetarians & Vegans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7741846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A “What If?” explanation for the time between Star Trek II and Star Trek III.  Migrated (with some revisions) from the Spiced Peaches e-zine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Displaced

There are times when intellect fails.

McCoy was a doctor.  He knew all about the stages of mourning.  But he knew them on an intellectual level; from experience, he was sure that when the time came for each stage to take him, he would be convinced that he would feel that way forever.  That his denial would be illogically profound, his anger would eat away at him, his bargaining would be desperately sincere, and his depression would leave him lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and wishing he could die, too - acceptance so far away that even the word seemed like a meaningless jumble of syllables.

But he woke up the morning after the funeral feeling - settled.  Sad, yes, but hardly bereaved - and this was strange.  Wrong.  He looked out of the porthole in his quarters at the deep black vacuum of space, punctuated by distant stars, and realized that a very logical thought was running through his mind - _it was a voluntary choice, and his death saved us all.  He knew this and was pleased to make that choice.  It makes no sense for this to impact on my own work._

It was not right.  Did he really think so little of the Vulcan?  Damn him - for all of his comments about ice-water blood and pointy ears, comments he was so certain he had made only in jest, to conceal a deep affection - had they been the reality after all?  How else could he explain this monumental indifference?

What kind of a man was he?

His stomach grumbled, and he decided it would not be logical to sit around in his quarters and not eat simply because someone else had died.  He walked to the mess hall and was surprised to discover that he had a hearty appetite.  For a vegetable omelet.  The smell of bacon made his stomach turn.

He walked through the rest of the day in a daze.  No, not a daze - an anti-daze, a feeling of clarity and detachment from brooding that did not feel natural at all.  He was efficient, focused, driven.  He was as competent as he had ever been.  He finished his regular work in record time, and had some leisure afterwards to effect some upgrades to the diagnostic capacity of the biobeds that had been on his mind.

Was this how his subconscious had decided to mourn the lost Vulcan? By becoming one himself?

It would certainly explain his even acceptance of the loss.

That evening, just for the hell of it, he tried one of Spock's meditation exercises. The Vulcan had often promoted them unsuccessfully to McCoy, but that night - it worked.  McCoy slipped into a sense of detached peace with ease, and went to sleep in his bed with his body as loose and calm as his mind.

He woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thrashing and tangled in his bedclothes.  He felt torn in two, incompatible thoughts running through his brain and smashing into one another blindly.  Part of him was trying to calm and assure another part of him that was screaming a song of loss and depression, balanced with a high-pitched note of fear.

Whatever happened to good old Kübler-Ross?

He could barely haul himself out of bed, shower, and dress.  That day was a bona fide daze, as if one day of preternatural clarity had sucked out his concentration for the month.  Chapel gave him worried looks.  He ignored them.  There was a battle going on in his mind, and it did not give him enough consciousness left over to wonder _why_ there was a battle going on in his mind.  He barely had enough consciousness to walk and talk.

Later that night, in his quarters, he paused in front of the mirror on his way to the sonic shower.  He looked at the body of a stranger.  Old, yes, but fit, and strangely appealing, in a way that one's own body should not be.  The word _Narcissus_ flitted through his mind as he stroked his own pectorals, rubbed his arms, kneaded his shoulders, and eventually slid his hand down to his erection.  He looked into his own eyes (were they actually blue?) as he came, gasping.

This was definitely not normal.

He tried that meditation trick again, but it did not work.  His brain was jumping from place to place like a nervous cricket, poking at the most horrible day of his life like it was a festering wound.  Engineering. Spock.  Fingers on himself.  The bright, hot light of the drive.  Kirk in his arms.  Kirk too far away...

His brain allowed him no sleep that night, and the next day, the daze he was in was even more profound.  He found he had to be careful where he set his feet, or he would walk right into the hull.

Chapel kept asking him if he was all right.  He mustered up a curt  _yes_.  He couldn't tell her that he had a constant urge to cut himself and see what his blood looked like.

He knew that she would speak with Kirk about this.  Kirk, his dearest friend.  His brain ran circles around that concept, looking at if from all angles.  Such a multifaceted situation.  So many ways to care for a man.  So many ways to distract himself from his damn work, and it was illogical to brood on what you had left behind, and he had _left it behind_ \- how could he have done such a thing?  _I had no choice_ , he told himself plaintively, and for a time, he could concentrate on his work again.

That night, he tried not to look at the mirror, skipping a shower to climb into bed, exhausted.  He still ended up naked, stroking himself with tentative surprise, as if he were in another man's body.  The thrill of discovery of his own sensitive spots was almost unbearably sensual, and there was most definitely something wrong with him.

He slept badly for the rest of that week, his mind and body too tense and disturbed for sleep, and his days increasingly blurred into each other.  He did not know what day it was.  He wondered about his own name.  His face began to be even less familiar, as his beard grew.

The last night before docking, he realized, in a moment of lucidity, how little he had done in the past week, how much of the necessary work of the ship's doctor had stacked up.  He stayed late in Sickbay trying to finish it all.  He failed.  Of course, he noted to himself; it was not logical to expect him to finish a week's worth of work in one night, especially in his state.  But he had to try, dammit, even if it meant walking back to his quarters too exhausted to see.  He had to focus entirely on putting one foot in front of another, on keeping himself upright. Herculean tasks.

Someone had sealed his quarters.  What kind of bastards were these people?  He just needed to get in, breathe the atmosphere, feel the warmth.  He was too cold, a chill that soaked him through, as if his body had a chunk of ice where his heart should be.  Maybe he was coming down with something.  Break the seals... like that.  Stagger inside.

It was warm.  Too warm on his skin, not warm enough inside of his body.  He sat down on the chair, disconcerted.  His lovely body.  His too-cold body.  What the hell was wrong with him?

Spock, he wanted to say, and Bones, and _Kirk, please take me back_...

Lost.  So lost.  Alone.  A man half-dead.  He could not even remember what it felt like to be alive.

 

* * *

 

The one problem with Vulcan, McCoy decided - well, except for the fact that it was populated with Vulcans - was that it was so damn hot.

Still, he thought with amusement as he watched the blazing sun dip low, it wasn't as bad as a Georgia summer.  At least it was a  _dry_ heat.

It was oddly quiet.  Not, he realized, because of anything in the environment.  It was an internal quietude.  All that was inside of himself, now, was _him_ , and he felt, for the first time in far too long, comfortable in his own head.  Two souls were not made to share one body like that.

McCoy turned at the soft surrations of sandals on soft ground.  Spock stood there - in a sense.  Spock's face, Spock's hair, the alien's impassive, greenish face.  But his eyes were haunted; McCoy saw in them flashes of that same madness that had wrestled with him in the weeks after Spock's death.  It tasted more _lost_ , however.

Spock nodded, a small, slow movement of his head, then stood next to McCoy as they watched the sun touch the horizon.  It was just not right.  McCoy had been the one to do the autopsy, after all.  He would not have trusted it to anyone else.  He had felt that cold skin under his fingers; he had seen the green heart, lying still, not beating.  He had seen those glassy, dead eyes.  It had been a shell, devoid of life - and yet, here it stood, breathing quietly next to him.

"I remember you," the shell said, in its familiar, quiet, deep voice.  "Bones.  You are also my friend."

"Yes," McCoy replied, heavily.  Why did he feel like that term was lacking?  That was what he had been, was it not?  And all he had aspired to be?  But he could not forget those nights, looking at himself as if he were someone else, touching himself as if he were trying to please another.  Had that been just some strange side-effect?  Was it something Spock would remember?  With pleasure, or with shame?

"You must forgive me," Spock said, his voice even and measured.  "I still need time to remember."

Yes, what if he did remember?  What if it were something a Vulcan could desire, somewhere in the recesses of his green, overly muscular heart?  What if he asked for it, now that they were separate, as they should be?

Could an old doctor allow himself to believe in miracles?


End file.
